Xu Lu wins Best Student Presentation

Xu Lu wins Best Student Presentation

Xu Lu, a graduate student working for Dr. Xuguang Wang in the Multiscale data Assimilation and Predictability (MAP,) lab, has been declared the Best Student Presentation of the 21st AMS IOAS-AOLS Conference in January 2017, for his presentation entitled “Impact of Issues of Vortex Initialization and HWRF Model Errors on Hurricane Inner Core Data Assimilation and Intensity Prediction”. His presentation was evaluated as one of the top two in a high-quality field of eligible presentations. The award comprises a certificate and a $200 prize.

This was Lu’s second AMS conference; his first was the 20th AMS IOAS-AOLS between 10–14 January, 2016 New Orleans, LA, where he gave a presentation named as “Development and research of the GSI-based, Cycled, Dual Resolution Hybrid Ensemble-Variational Data Assimilation System for HWRF” . Lu also attended the 37th conference on Radar Meteorology in Norman between 14 – 18 September 2015 here in Norman, OK, where he presented a poster named “Impacts of Assimilating Airborne Tail Doppler Radar Observations using the GSI-based Hybrid Ensemble-Variational Data Assimilation System for HWRF to Improve Operational High-Resolution Tropical Cyclone Prediction”.

Xu told us a little about what brought him to where he is now: His father is a local weatherman in his hometown, but Xu found that his forecasts were not always to be trusted! This led to his beginning interest in Atmospheric Science. From there, he “was first initiated in the field of data assimilation when I was still a master student back in China. Because I think the initial conditions are very important for both modeling and research. Then many thanks to my advisor Dr. Xulin Ma from NUIST (Nanjing University of Information, Science and Technology) at that time, I happened to get a chance to work with Dr. Xuguang Wang at OU and work on the data assimilation of tail doppler radar observations on hurricane Sandy. I found both the hurricanes and the data assimilation are very interesting after working on them for a while. Then I decided to keep working on this subject after my master’s degree and became a PhD student in OU.” Learn more about the MAP Lab where Xu Lu and others collaborate here: http://weather.ou.edu/~map/index.html

Xu’s interested most by hurricane research at this time, and credits the following for collaborating with him on the project: “Dr. Xuguang Wang, my adviser, gave me the most precious and valuable help and advice. At the same time, we have lots of other collaborators from different organizations and programs: Mingjing Tong, Jason Sippel, Vijay Tallapragada, NCEP/EMC, College Park, MD; Frank Marks, Jun Zhang, AOML/HRD, Miami, FL; Ping Zhu, FIU, Miami, FL; Michael Bell, CSU, Fort Collins, CO; Jim Doyle, NRL, Monterey, CA; NOAA HFIP and ONR TCI programs.

Mr. Lu had this advised anyone who would like to achieve something similar to confident and passionate, to control the time and pace for their presentation, and most importantly to work hard on the scientific value of their research prior to the presentation. He advises those who visit Seattle to take a friend and enjoy the Crab Feast at the Crab Pot restaurant, and to spend some time wandering through Pike Place Market for both the people-watching and street musicians.